Over the past two or three years, there have been three albums that I keep going back to over and over. They are Holly Williams’ The Ones We Never Knew, Chris Rice’s Amusing, and Steven Delopoulos’ Me Died Blue. Every time I put one of these CD’s in my player, it stays there for a long time. I recently realized they all have a couple things in common. For starters, Monroe Jones produced or co-produced all three, and they were released jointly with Eb+Flo, the label co-owned by Jones, Rice, and drummer Ken Lewis. Ken played drums and percussion on each of them, Mark Hill played bass, and the Love Sponge String Quartet (that I get to be in the studio with a couple times a month) added the strings.
My favorite song of Steven’s from Me Died Blue is Rocky Boat. When I saw him in concert last week (in a great show that included Judd and Maggie and Matthew Perryman Jones), I asked him the story behind Rocky Boat, and he confirmed my interpretation (that I haven’t heard anyone else talk about). After having the CD for about a year, one of the lines in that song caught my attention, so I dug out the liner notes and followed along. And to me, it looked like it was a damning critique of the Christian subculture in general, and the CCM industry in particular. In the second verse, he sings Off I go into the night / I sing my tunes, I fake the light / I crack a smile and when I’m cued / I read the lines and spit ‘em right. The chorus, which sounds like it was written after he escaped from the gated community, says I am free, I am free / Ain’t nobody gonna lie to me / And my cup inside is clean / And the mountains tall and green // Say goodbye to the devil’s door / Swim away from the ocean floor / Living waters inside me / I am free, I am free, I am free. And in the last verse he sings I was on that rocky boat / Trying to sing and catch my note / But my face turned blue and green / Oh, the ocean big and mean // But God is here, and God is there / God is dark, and God is fair / Letting love arrange this song / All in love where we belong.
Steven is working on his new album now, which did have a title that I loved, As If Love Were a Sword. That has since been changed to Straightjacket, and he just released a free EP that includes two songs from the new album, two songs from Me Died Blue, and two songs from Burlap to Cashmere’s live shows. You can download the EP, Work to Be Done, here.